Posted: Tue 26 May 2009, 11:57 Post subject:
How to do a One-Click Installation of Puppy

Update: This package now contains two installer scripts. You can either boot the target machine off a Live CD or a USB drive.

Unetbootin and Pendrivelinux Users: Look on your Puppy flash drive for a file named syslinux.cfg. If it contains the argument pmedia=cd, change it to pmedia=usbflash. Otherwise the One-Click Installer will fail.

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Many users have old computers that they want to completely erase and restore with Puppy. Here are the steps to do a one-click automated install.

We will assume that you already have a Live CD that works on the target machine and you are familiar with basic Puppy operations. Read here for more information. (If you want to install Puppy in a dual-boot setup with Windows, read here.)

The package below contains scripts that will do an automatic hard drive install of any official Puppy version back to 2.15. (The USB installer may not work with very old Puppies.) There are options for both frugal and full configurations. For most machines, a frugal install is the simpler, faster choice. It also gives you the flexibility to add other features to Puppy, like Open Office.

These installers will erase the hard drive, format a new partition, create a swap file, install Puppy and set up the GRUB bootloader. They should work on any machine with standard hardware.

Download and extract the "one-click-installer" folder. Copy the folder to a flash drive. Or, if you already have the target machine on-line with the Live CD, just download the package directly and store it in /root.

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CD Method:

Boot the target computer off the Live CD.

Note: If there is an existing version of Puppy on the hard drive or if you have been storing a pup_save file there, you must boot by typing the following option. There is a short initial pause as the Live CD starts for doing this.

Code:

puppy pfix=ram

Leave the CD in the drive.

Mount the flash drive, open the "one-click-installer" folder and click on the icon labeled "install-cd". Before installation starts, you will get to answer a YES/NO question.

When the installation is done, finish with a shutdown/reboot and make a pup_save file. Your computer is ready to run Puppy on the next start. Some Puppy versions will also ask if you want to save additional files to the hard drive. Answer NO.

The full-install procedure uses the Puppy Universal Installer to do the actual copying from CD to hard drive, so it involves more steps. When the PUI gets to the point of installing GRUB, cancel it. (You may have to close several windows to make it stop.) Finish with a shutdown/reboot but do NOT make a pup_save file.

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USB Method:

Copy the installer folder onto your flash drive and boot off it.

Mount the flash drive and click on "install-usb".

At shutdown, do NOT make a pup_save file yet, because Puppy will want to put it on the flash drive. Reboot off the hard drive and make one at the end of that session.

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Please note. The PET by ecomoney that is attached to the message directly below this one is now out of date and should not be used.

I am such a dirty hacker, I almost feel ashamed to post this...I am truly "standing on the shoulders of giants"

This is a .pet that when clicked on, will look at the amount of RAM available, decide to do either a FULL or a FRUGAL install (depending on whether there is more or less than 128mb). Simply click on the attachement below and select the option "open with petget", and it will work its magic. Alternatively download it, then click on it (it will go into the /root directory, accessible from the "file" icon in the top left of the Puppy Linux Desktop).

Its based on rcrsn51's scripts, merged together with work from the HanSamBen project from Sidders and TechnoSaurus.

Do the installers make it clear at the start with a prominent warning message that all data on the hard drive will be destroyed?

I have a computer setup with 3 gigs of ram, a SATA hard drive and a PATA (IDE) hard drive.
I was going to do a frugal install to the second (PATA) hard drive and had set up an ext2 partition that showed as sdb3.
I saw a warning with Grub install that on a mixture of SATA and PATA hard drives, Grub might see the drives as reversed.
That is if the SATA drive was hd 0, grub might see is as hd 1.
I investigated this by letting Puppy do a frugal install to sdb3.
I did not install GRUB at this time.
I then booted from a SuperGrub floppy disk and using the menu.lst created by the frugal install, moved from temp and renamed to menu.lst.
When I went to boot from the menu.lst, I got an error of :File not found.
The first line of that menu.lst was rootnoverify (hd1,2).
I then dropped to the Grub command line and typed
root (hd0,2)
I was greeted with the partition being found and listed as ext2.
I modified menu list accordingly and Puppy booted up.

So if you have a combination of SATA and PATA hard drives, be very careful using Grub.
In my case, if I would have assumed that my SATA drive was hd 0, and written grub to the superblock of hd 1, I would have been overwriting the Vista boot sector.
Also, on a file not found, when booting, if Puppy is creating a menu.lst entry to be included in menu.lst
and the default it creates uses rootnoverify, that partition validity is not checked.
If you use root (hdx,x) with the dirve and partition in place of the x'es, the validity of the partition will be checked.
Using rootnoverify will give you a file not found if the partition does not exsist with no mention of the partition not existing.
A lot of times, it can be entering the wrong drive or partition in your menu.lst.

All this info came to me after being Very Careful in trying to install Puppy frugally to a Computer that had Vista on the SATA drive.
I had installed the second drive (PATA), and wanted to make doubly sure I would not overwrite anything on the SATA (Vista) drive with the install.

I certainly agree that configuring GRUB in a multi-drive computer has to be done with caution, especially if you need to preserve another OS.

However, in your scenario, you actually would have been OK. If you had tried to install GRUB to (hd1,2), GRUB would not have found the Stage2 files there and would have aborted. So your Vista bootloader would not have been overwritten.

That's why GRUB has the "find" command. It identifies the target partition before you do the install.

The ubuntu installer (especially in later versions) is a superb model for usability. The Gui for the installer urgently needs an overhaul if puppy is to meet its first objective...

Heres an opportunity for someone with even modest GUI development skills to make areal difference to puppies primary mission goal.

Puppy can also do other types of installs that ubuntu cant (it needs its own partition). It can literally "repair" (to the end-users mind) a broken XP computer by hooking into the XP bootloader...in essence installing itself onto an NTFS partition (how cool is that?). There is some talk about that on this thread. The beauty of this is that it doesnt require any repartitioning (which can be risky). From the legions of frustrated XP repair men out there (and as an ex-one myself) I would think this would be an extremely popular choice too (and one in the eye for redmond)._________________Puppy Linux's Mission

My install of Puppy 421 is finalized as a dual boot with Vista using the Vista bootloader and BSD to select between Vista and a Grub bootloader for a frugal install of Puppy to a partition on a second hard drive.
The thing that concerns me here is that a nobe that has an OS he wants to keep on his main hard drive and tries to use the One-Click-Install script to install Puppy to a second hard drive or partition, may lock himself out of his existing OS if not destroy it completely.
So lots of chances to back out of the install should be given with warnings before any damage is done.

The preamble in the first message of this thread talks about completely erasing an old machine. That's how the one-click installer has been employed successfully by several recent users who could not get the PUI to work for them.

Personally, I do not like the idea of a desktop icon, menu entry or an automated PET like the one above appears to be. It would be too easy for a novice to confuse this with the PUI and do something bad.

I also don't like the idea of a boot option that runs the installer. Users might assume that they were launching an Ubuntu-like setup program with multiple options.

I also don't like the idea of a boot option that runs the installer. Users might assume that they were launching an Ubuntu-like setup program with multiple options.

The "pfix=recycle" parameter would ensure that users were to know that it would be effectively reconditioning the computer (transferring from one user to another). Perhaps if this were "specialist knowledge" (i.e. only known about by specialist recyclers who need to recondition computers quickly) and was not displayed as an option in the boot parameters (f2 I believe) then it would avoid these accidents. Only people who knew what they were doing (those who recycle computers all day long) would know of its existence.

I understand both of your concerns about users losing their data. We can all agree users data is much more safely stored on a Linux computer than a Windows one. Looking at the bigger picture, perhaps then creating a suitably cautious, but easily usable, graphical installer (which the .pet package isnt) would be a way that us responsible developers could ensure the survival of peoples valuable data._________________Puppy Linux's Mission

For recyclers who want to image machines quickly, the easiest solution would be a remastered Live CD with the installer folder on the CD but external to the sfs file. This can easily be done by making a GRUB-bootable CD.

Once the machine has booted to the desktop, it would just be a matter of mounting the CD and running the installer from there. Puppy itself would not need remastering and there would be no permanent trace of the installer inside Puppy.

So your saying put it on the cd itself? ok that would work. Having it as a boot parameter would speed up the whole installation process, but I should learn compromise

When I have five minutes, I will update the PET to include an explaination (in "newblish"), an "are you sure?", an "are you absolutely sure?", and an "if you click 'yes' again it will wipe EVERYTHING off this computer, are you totally sure this is OK?"_________________Puppy Linux's Mission

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